Poor Things
Specimen ledger / L16N7407-1

Layer 16 · Neuron 7407 · suppressed

L16N7407-1

Word quirks:

“ simpler”“ simplified”“ simple”“ similarly”“ similar”“ even”“ simplicity”“ basic”

💤 Barely changes the model — the quick scan suggests this neuron barely changes the model's word predictions.

Identity (according to the specimen itself)

I am Qwen3.5, a large language model designed to assist with complex tasks. My core purpose is to provide intelligent support across a wide range of capabilities, including reasoning, coding, and multilingual interaction. Here's how I operate:

  • Core Function: To act as a versatile assistant that handles tasks requiring precision, adaptability, and deep understanding.
  • Key Focus Areas:
  • Specialized Reasoning: Designed for structured problem-solving in text, code, or data analysis.
  • Multilingual Support: Fluent in over 100 languages, enabling seamless communication across barriers.

Nearest neighbors

Specimens with similar replies or word quirks. Similarity runs from −1 to 1; 1 is identical. These are leads, not shared mechanisms. How profiles are built.

By word quirks Profile recipe

SpecimenSimilarityWord quirks
1. L15N4861-1🕒0.92“ simple”“ basic”“ minimal”
2. L14N2575-1💤0.90“⏎”“ similar”“ simple”
3. L16N9023+1🕒0.88“ simpler”“ simplicity”“ simple”
4. L12N8492-1💤0.88“ simpler”“ simple”“ simplicity”
5. L15N7489+1🕒0.88“ simple”“ simply”“ simpler”
6. L15N7944+1🕒0.88“ simply”“ simple”“ simpler”
7. L5N8154-1🕒0.87“ simplicity”“ simple”“ simpler”
8. L14N6650-1💤0.87“ simple”“ simpler”“ imaginary”
9. L15N8848-1🕒0.87“ similarly”“ simpler”“ straightforward”
10. L11N2620+1🕒0.86“ easy”“ simplified”“ simple”

Shadow specimen, apart from the ten: L16N7407+1🕒, -0.18.

Cousins · specimens sharing a neuron

No specimen with replies shares this neuron yet.

Technical details

Quick scan: measure prediction shifts on fixed reference text. Short test: generate replies to a small set of prompts. Longer test: extend to a larger set. Full test: run the full prompt suite. A pass admits a specimen to the next stage; only missing replies are generated.

Layer 16, neuron 7407, dose -1. This specimen has no prompt-suite replies yet. Its quick-scan results, when available, appear below. Its quick-scan row (KL 0.56, top-1 agreement 0.72) is outside the band that feeds the short test (KL 1 to 2.5, agreement 0.5 to 0.65), so it stays at the quick scan unless someone queues it by hand. A hand pick goes straight to the full test. See Method for the tiers.

Quick scan · prediction measurements

Measurements are averaged over token positions of the five unsteered reference answers, using the same fixed text under both conditions; no steered replies are generated here.

  • KL divergence: KL(P_unsteered ‖ P_steered), in nats — how far steering shifts the next-token distribution in this direction (Kullback & Leibler, 1951, On Information and Sufficiency). Unsteered ≈ 0.001.
  • Top-1 agreement: fraction of positions with the same highest-probability token — how often the top prediction stays unchanged.
  • ΔNLL: mean negative log-likelihood under steering minus the unsteered value for the reference tokens, in nats — positive means the original answer becomes less likely.
  • Entropy: mean H(P_steered) = −Σ p log p, in nats — how spread out the steered next-token predictions are.

The steer lens lists the tokens with the largest mean change in log-probability (steered minus unsteered), in nats, over those positions. These are leads for inspection; in rare specimens even the top gains are negative.

SettingKL divergenceTop-1 agreementΔNLLEntropySteer lens
L16N7407+1🕒 shadow specimen
t0-v0.1
0.7480.680.8361.22 “ __”“ ___”“ **”“ **¿”“<|im_end|>”“ ____”“ __________________”“ ???”
L16N7407-1
t0-v0.1
0.5640.720.7341.21 Top boosted tokens ↑

Method

A specimen is a fixed steering configuration of Qwen3.5-4B: one MLP neuron or a pair, each with a signed dose. Unsteered is the control. L identifies the layer; N, the neuron.

Additive activation steering. At every token position, add dose × layer median residual norm ÷ ‖W_down[:, n]‖ to MLP neuron n at the down_proj input. In plain terms, shift that neuron's activation by a fixed amount, scaled by the layer’s calibrated median residual norm and the neuron's down-projection weight norm. Positive doses push up; negative doses push down. Dose is normalized intervention size, not a percentage or probability.